Just guessing but I would imagine the specs of the system he posted in the original post are one of the pre made systems which includes everything in one package.. Makes customising a bit more difficult.

Chances are if a person is asking such a question like that he is not a complete tech head like some of us here and I think for his usage the system he specified would be more than adequate for his needs.

I think "he" is actually a "her", judging by the name Karen. Could be wrong but I don't think I am.

Karen, the spec looks fine but what is the asking price for that system?

The spec isn't too bad although I'd prefer to know what mobo is being used. I'm guessing it's a Dell and I frankly wouldn't touch one. You'll get a much better deal if you spec and/or build it yourself.

I'm currently rebuilding my main PC as the motherboard fried itself last week. Depressing but it did last for four years so I'm not too dis-heartened. I've already bought a Q6600, Artic Silver cooler & 2GB of Corsair XMS2 DDR800 RAM. I'm just waiting on my Abit Dark Raider mobo and I'm good to go.

I would prefer a Radeon card, because the extra image processor for HD-Movies, Movie making and accelerating filters in Photoshop, is much faster then the one in a NVidia Card!

For example, the Radeon HD2600XT makes 20-30% more Performance when decoding Videos or using high quality fiters in Photoshop opposite to a 8800 GT card!!!

What makes me go for ATI in this case is aso that they are that much less power hungry than the GeForce!

ciao,

Karhallarn

Hello Karhallarn,

As said before me, as of yet Photoshop and other graphic software do _not_ take advantage of the GPU (the graphic's card processor) for their operations. That will change of course, but for the moment two identic computers except for the graphics card, one with a low end and one with a high end, will perform the same.

As for video, it is quite the same except that ATI and nVidia begin to bundle special software with their cards that does take advantage of this extra graphic-processing power.

Adobe were demonstrating (in May this year) GPU-enchanced photoshopping. They were using a 3GB 442MP image for their demonstration and the onlookers characterized the performance like what you'd expect from a 5MP image in current versions - i.e. very fast.

Later in June, Adobe - shockingly - said that this GPU supprt feature wasn't YET scheduled to be part on any PS release such as the upcoming "CS Next" (codename: Stonehenge) release.

So they have been working on GPU support, but they haven't confirmed if or when this tech will be part of PS. But why on Earth would the choose to exclude it - this is exactly what their high-end clients need for the monster-sized super-rez images.

In the case that they did cancel it (I'll be checking that later, as I'm still dubious...), I can see a couple of reasons:

Lack of appropriate support from GPU manufacturers:

Even though image processing is possible via the GPU, it is still a relatively new application of the technology, and therefore the documentation on the subject is scarce. Perhaps Adobe thought it'd take them less time to master it, but in the final they're short on time, so they'd rather cut the feature and bring it with an update.

Functionning of GPU processing on multiple platforms

Adobe likes to have its software run on Mac OS X and Windows OSs. However, the functioning of the graphics card (ie. the driverspace) on both platforms is quite different; Microsoft uses a Unified Driver Model for Vista, DirectX 9 for XP, whereas Mac OS uses Core Open GL or Core Image to achieve this. A quick solution would be to use Open GL all the way, but it doesn't provide as much flexibility and functionality.

So even though it is possible and that functioning will definitely appear in the months/years to come, it is definitely tricky and perhaps Adobe would rather postpone this functionality (which, let's admit it, isn't that indispensable) than postpone the whole software.

Of course, that is only a theory, and I'd be surprised if they indeed cancelled GPU acceleration for CS4.

The pc specs are mostly fine as long as the buyer isnt confident enough to build their own.

The system is not a gaming system ... the graphics card is an older model and an mid range one at that, gpu at this stage isnt worth worrying about too much as long as you dont want to play games as stated both ati and nvidia are working on photoshop support which isnt yet released any when is will probably require a new gpu.

Most monitor advice on here is pretty sound ... if its mainly a image editing pc then you'll want the best monitor possible to replicate colours as best as possible.

Hard drive wise lots of small hard drives is not a good idea... its not really faster than a good large hd.

I would reccomend a samsung f1 1tb hard drive ... they're around £90-100 which is great for a whole tb and it has very dense platters so read write times are some of the fastest you can get. You can then get a external hard drive for backup perposes. Photoshop wont make much use of a second hard drive expecially if you have 4gb of ram.

As for ram a 32bit os can only address 4gb so the reason you'll have less than 4gb showing in your specs is becuase all the other ram in the system needs addessing (gpu, drive buffers etc etc) so you'll loose an ammount proportinate to that.

[...]as stated both ati and nvidia are working on photoshop support which isnt yet released any when is will probably require a new gpu.

It is not ATI and nVidia that are working on Photoshop support, but rather Adobe working on GPU support.

Thus when the functionality is available, it is highly unlikely that it will require a new GPU- to explain it simply, Adobe just needs to make use of pre-existing possibilities already built in the modern graphic cards; it is not the manufacturers who need to add further functionalities.
(and to explain it technically, what Adobe is doing is rewriting the image treatment code to GPU language (most probably HLSL but they could use GLSL as well) instead of basic x86 code)

Just wanted to point that out.

Otherwise for the hard drive, it is up to your personal choice really, but I wouldn't recommend having a 1 Tb hard drive, but rather two 500 Gb ones. The price will be mostly the same, but the thing is that when a drive fails, you'll still have another one. Whereas if you only have one, you'll lose everything.
It is definitely not a question of speed, which will be the same in either case, but of reliability.